Voice Over Internet Protocol and the Canadian Conundrum

American business travelers and others sojourning in Canada may be forgiven for wondering if our northern neighbors aren’t part of some great, unholy alliance forged to inflate the market share of internet telephony services.

At least, once they’ve had a chance to calm down after the shock of seeing their next phone bill.

Either by land-line or cellular, fees and charges are sure to stun the unsuspecting; and the electronic extortion cuts equally in both directions. Who says the major carriers have lost their money-grabbing touch when it comes to overcharging for long distance? No longer me. On a recent business trip polar-ward my wife ran up charges of forty-five dollars for barely that many minutes of uneventful evening chitchat with me back home in the U.S. Even though the international border was mere miles away.

This sort of robbery was exactly what NAFTA was designed to remedy — was it not?

Purely as a defense, more and more business travelers are venturing into the imperfect world of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony to reach the home office or to tuck the kids in at night back home. Skype, Gizmo5 and other solutions are becoming commonly used by the cognizant in an effort to hold down costs and keep those lines of communication open.

But be warned that the above strategy can add an «adventurous» element to a phone call — what with cosmic echoes and the other bizarre sound effects that fashion the commonest phone conversation into something closely resembling the sound track of «Star Trek.» Often, all that’s missing is Scottie’s agitated voice screeching from the engine room «SHE’LL NEVER HOLD CAPTAIN! YOU’VE GOT TO (etc., etc.)!!!»

Oh, and then there are the clauses, dependent or otherwise, that go missing from sentences utterly without warning, threatening to leave the listener in the dark about key bits of information!

The good news, however, is that many laptops now come with suitable built-in speakers which allow for surprisingly clear two-way communication using VoIP. Otherwise, fifteen dollars buys a serviceable headset.

All the better to zoom through those time warps with?

Source by Nick Yates